Overlapping Discourses:China’s Ming And Qing Spaces Of Knowledge As Solutions To The Modern Library’s Transformation

As the institution of the modern public library faces the crucial and difficult task of its digitalization, it also must consider its nature as a public space as well as the possibility of being an archive of atypical forms of knowledge. Understanding knowledge as proposed by Michel Foucault, as being composed of statements and discourses instead of sentences and books, the Ming and Qing libraries of China offer a great variety of coexisting discourses. What about these archives allowed such a wide variety of knowledge exchanges and what do they offer as models for reimagining the libraries of the future?...